DSC Teaching & Learning

Silly stuff

The Silly Stuff forum is a bit silly

First up, why don’t the ShapeRMIT and Silly Stuff forums have a vote up and down feature; or a permalink option to a single post; or tags; or trackback links; or images, WYSIWYG or HTML? These are common features on most other contemporary forum spaces and help generate rich-pictures of data. The absence of these features leads many to question what method, if any, is being used to analyse the very basic data being created here, and if that data is even very rich without the above mentioned forum response tools? All this is partly why we’ve decided to engage via this blog.

RMIT Google is more than a bit silly!

Currently we use Google, but we don’t really use Google. So many of the features that make Google Apps for Education a worthwhile investment are not available with RMIT accounts. We should have the full standard service, which would include:

Publish to YouTube account

Google Drive add-ons such as downloadable scripts

Google Drive – ability to publish to web

Switch on Google Maps

Enable Google+ Pages

Enable Google Classrooms

Enable Blogger widgets and add-ons

Enable Google+ sharing outside of RMIT by default

Google Sites publication outside the RMIT domain

Plus, students need to be able access their RMIT Google accounts beyond the period that they are enrolled, or be able to take their account profiles and artifacts with them when they leave (Google TakeOut is not enough).

If all of the above is not possible then switch off RMIT’s Google entirely, so we can use it the same way we use the rest of the Internet (WordPress, Twitter, Wikipedia, Vimeo, Soundcloud and all the others). Switching off RMIT Google will enable us to use Google services fully, without the inconvenience and confusing clash of accounts.

Blackboard, the black hole of digital literacy

Yes, Blackboard lacks some basic usability. Plus, similar to our current use of Google, the issue of only implementing some features causes just as much havoc here. For example…

Bulk Delete of course Information

Establishment of a wider range of role types

Blackboard Analytics tool

Social logins (Bring your own account)

We’ve been considering the ability for students to associate their RMIT account with their preferred social account (Twitter, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Outlook etc) for many years and yet we don’t seem to have progressed very far. This functionality is available externally for very simple web services that anyone can set up at low cost. The university should be able to incorporate this into CAS? It would improve the student experience and allow students to manage their own RMIT digital identities (which they’re doing anyway) with other services. It is silly that we continue to issue email accounts, Google accounts, etc. We should work out how to incorporate existing accounts, like all other sectors do. We’re reluctant to mention it, given the immaturity of our sector, but a Bring Your Own Account approach opens up new possibilities for data and learning analytics – but please, don’t be silly with that too!

Leave a Reply

Content created by Digital learning DSC for this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.

Acknowledgement of country: RMIT University acknowledges the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nations as the Traditional Owners of the land on which the University stands. The University respectfully recognises Elders both past and present. RMIT also acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of lands across Australia where it conducts its business, their Elders, Ancestors, cultures and heritage.